Letter gets there by hand-drawn map!

There are many stories of messages in bottles travelling thousands of miles before being picked up and read, and letters arriving decades after they were posted. But here is a different twist. Today, I read an interesting story published by BBC. This astonishing delivery took place in March and was then not reported until May, when it came to attention of local Icelandic news website, Skessuhorn which noted “anything is possible in Iceland”. The story has now, belatedly, gone viral on social media after a photo of the envelope was posted on Reddit.

Rebecca Cathrine Kaadu Ostenfeld was reportedly surprised when a letter was delivered to the horse farm where she lives with her husband and three children near Búðardalur in the west of Iceland.

Instead of a postal address or a recipient’s name, the sender had drawn a map of where they believed the farm to be, together with the following, in English:

“Country: Iceland. City: Búðardalur. Name: A horse farm with an Icelandic/Danish couple and three kids and a lot of sheep!”

The sender had also added a further clue to the intended recipient: “the Danish woman works in a supermarket in Búðardalur.”

The letter had been written and sent from the Icelandic capital Reykjavík by a tourist who had stayed at the farm but who obviously did not know the address.

And, extraordinarily, it arrived at the right place. Amazing, anything is possible in the world!